Pub Date : 2019-10-31DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.13
S. Haynes
The range of interpretations of Bonhoeffer’s life and thought continues to expand. Because he lived during dramatic times and made fateful decisions that placed him in grave danger, people inside and outside the Christian community are continually reassessing his contemporary relevance. As a way of demonstrating Bonhoeffer’s unique place in the religious imagination, this chapter explores some of the diverse and conflicting ways his legacy has been appropriated in the years since his death. Three constellations of ‘readings and receptions’ will be reviewed: the radical Bonhoeffer shaped by the secularizing theologians of the 1960s, the post-Holocaust Bonhoeffer fashioned by advocates of Jewish–Christian reconciliation, and the populist Bonhoeffer that has emerged in the second decade of the current century. Those who care about Bonhoeffer will do well to pay close attention to the ebb and flow of his reception as uninformed and politicized readings of his legacy become more common.
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Pub Date : 2019-10-31DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.9
Clifford J. Green
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was first and foremost a Christian theologian whose peace ethic grew out of his theology, as did his role in the coup d’état conspiracy to overthrow Hitler and National Socialism. Bonhoeffer’s was not an ethic of principles, neither nor did he abandon his Christian peace ethic to support the conspiracy. This chapter traces the development of his peace ethic to a form of conditional pacifism whose main components were Christological, ecclesial, scriptural, and doctrinal. Likewise it argues that his ethic of free responsibility exercised in the conspiracy must be understood from key theological passages and ethical themes in his book Ethics.
{"title":"Bonhoeffer’s Christian Peace Ethic, Conditional Pacifism, and Resistance","authors":"Clifford J. Green","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.9","url":null,"abstract":"Dietrich Bonhoeffer was first and foremost a Christian theologian whose peace ethic grew out of his theology, as did his role in the coup d’état conspiracy to overthrow Hitler and National Socialism. Bonhoeffer’s was not an ethic of principles, neither nor did he abandon his Christian peace ethic to support the conspiracy. This chapter traces the development of his peace ethic to a form of conditional pacifism whose main components were Christological, ecclesial, scriptural, and doctrinal. Likewise it argues that his ethic of free responsibility exercised in the conspiracy must be understood from key theological passages and ethical themes in his book Ethics.","PeriodicalId":404616,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122104595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-31DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.10
T. Greggs
This chapter examines Bonhoeffer’s account of the church and advocates that throughout Bonhoeffer’s corpus there remains a desire to explicate the reality of the church in terms of its structural being with and for the other. This structure exists both internally in terms of its members’ relation to each other, and externally as the church relates as a corporate body to the world. The chapter considers Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiological method; the visibility of the church; vicarious representation; the church as the body of Christ; the agency of the Holy Spirit; preaching, the sacraments, and the offices of the church; and the question of the church in a religionless age.
{"title":"Ecclesiology","authors":"T. Greggs","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.10","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines Bonhoeffer’s account of the church and advocates that throughout Bonhoeffer’s corpus there remains a desire to explicate the reality of the church in terms of its structural being with and for the other. This structure exists both internally in terms of its members’ relation to each other, and externally as the church relates as a corporate body to the world. The chapter considers Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiological method; the visibility of the church; vicarious representation; the church as the body of Christ; the agency of the Holy Spirit; preaching, the sacraments, and the offices of the church; and the question of the church in a religionless age.","PeriodicalId":404616,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129634695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-31DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.30
Reggie L. Williams
The political ideology of the Third Reich was the culmination of years of lingering hope for an ideal German ethnic community populated with ideal German humanity. The theology of the German Christian movement turned Jesus into a divine representation of the racially pure Aryan, enabling race-hatred to become a core part of German religious life. That social reality was also the context in which Bonhoeffer was raised, and trained as a theologian and a pastor. Bonhoeffer had to confront that ideology within himself, and to grow beyond what he had received as a child growing up in Germany in order to come to see racism as a defining problem for genuine Christianity in Nazi Germany.
{"title":"Bonhoeffer and Race","authors":"Reggie L. Williams","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.30","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.30","url":null,"abstract":"The political ideology of the Third Reich was the culmination of years of lingering hope for an ideal German ethnic community populated with ideal German humanity. The theology of the German Christian movement turned Jesus into a divine representation of the racially pure Aryan, enabling race-hatred to become a core part of German religious life. That social reality was also the context in which Bonhoeffer was raised, and trained as a theologian and a pastor. Bonhoeffer had to confront that ideology within himself, and to grow beyond what he had received as a child growing up in Germany in order to come to see racism as a defining problem for genuine Christianity in Nazi Germany.","PeriodicalId":404616,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer","volume":"56 7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133385023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-31DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.23
G. Mckenny
The concepts of freedom, responsibility, and moral agency are tightly interwoven in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thought and have to do with the relation of subject to the other that is at the centre of Bonhoeffer’s ethics and theological anthropology. This chapter presents and critically examines these three concepts. It argues that Bonhoeffer’s key notion of responsibility for the other (that is, liability) is an important and permanent contribution to Christian ethics. It also argues that Bonhoeffer’s notions of the responsibility of the agent (that is, imputability) and the agent’s responsibility to the other (that is, accountability) are attenuated, to the detriment of his ethics. Finally, the chapter argues that Bonhoeffer’s treatment of vicarious representative action as an expression of responsibility for the other is more ambiguous and less suited to be a basic principle of social ethics than Bonhoeffer supposes.
{"title":"Freedom, Responsibility, and Moral Agency","authors":"G. Mckenny","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.23","url":null,"abstract":"The concepts of freedom, responsibility, and moral agency are tightly interwoven in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thought and have to do with the relation of subject to the other that is at the centre of Bonhoeffer’s ethics and theological anthropology. This chapter presents and critically examines these three concepts. It argues that Bonhoeffer’s key notion of responsibility for the other (that is, liability) is an important and permanent contribution to Christian ethics. It also argues that Bonhoeffer’s notions of the responsibility of the agent (that is, imputability) and the agent’s responsibility to the other (that is, accountability) are attenuated, to the detriment of his ethics. Finally, the chapter argues that Bonhoeffer’s treatment of vicarious representative action as an expression of responsibility for the other is more ambiguous and less suited to be a basic principle of social ethics than Bonhoeffer supposes.","PeriodicalId":404616,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123041393","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-31DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.3
M. Knight
Bonhoeffer’s varied corpus dictates that his reflections on sin and salvation are diverse in register and range between expositing his theological inheritance and a more deliberative reworking of key themes. The towering element of that inheritance is, naturally, Luther and the doctrine of justification. A resolute focus on the person of Christ that runs throughout all his writings leads Bonhoeffer to reframe the notion of justification as the reality of being incorporated into the life of one who creates a ‘new humanity’. In the words of Hofmann, whom Bonhoeffer quotes: ‘To understand his person and history properly is to understand our reconciliation properly’ (cf. DBWE 1: 142). This emphasis opens Bonhoeffer to theological resources beyond his proximate tradition, while also providing ways to draw together the various ‘moments’ of classical soteriology, to critique problematic turns in Protestant thought, and to show the comprehensive relevance of the dialectic of sin and salvation for all Christian thinking.
{"title":"Sin and Salvation","authors":"M. Knight","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.3","url":null,"abstract":"Bonhoeffer’s varied corpus dictates that his reflections on sin and salvation are diverse in register and range between expositing his theological inheritance and a more deliberative reworking of key themes. The towering element of that inheritance is, naturally, Luther and the doctrine of justification. A resolute focus on the person of Christ that runs throughout all his writings leads Bonhoeffer to reframe the notion of justification as the reality of being incorporated into the life of one who creates a ‘new humanity’. In the words of Hofmann, whom Bonhoeffer quotes: ‘To understand his person and history properly is to understand our reconciliation properly’ (cf. DBWE 1: 142). This emphasis opens Bonhoeffer to theological resources beyond his proximate tradition, while also providing ways to draw together the various ‘moments’ of classical soteriology, to critique problematic turns in Protestant thought, and to show the comprehensive relevance of the dialectic of sin and salvation for all Christian thinking.","PeriodicalId":404616,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132728465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-31DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.17
N. Koopman
This chapter examines the reception of Bonhoeffer in global contexts by taking one such context as a detailed case study, namely South Africa. The chapter begins by examining the complex concept of ubuntu, which has been appealed to in South African ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ processes. Exploring the emphases upon the notions of solidarity, communion, unity and reconciliation which are ingredient within that influential concept, the chapter then moves to outline some of the concerns that have been levelled against this concept and its application in public theology, before suggesting how Bonhoeffer’s own relational anthropology, with its Christological and ecclesiological dimensions, might ameliorate some of these potential problems. It concludes by suggesting that Bonhoeffer’s thinking here can make a significant contribution to the development of a contemporary public theology of human dignity and rights both in South Africa and beyond.
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Pub Date : 2019-10-31DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.19
D. Lose
In addition to being a noted systematic theologian, ethicist, and leader of the Confessing Church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also a preacher. In fact, at the centre of all his theological work stands his unfaltering conviction that the preached Word is the primary expression of the Gospel and the place where contemporary believers encounter their living Lord. Bonhoeffer’s homiletic revolves around the preacher’s role of listening attentively to the witness of Scripture in order to accompany the living Word into the congregation so it may meet people where they are, sustain them in their present circumstances, and form them into the living Body of Christ in order to respond to the current needs of the world.
{"title":"Bonhoeffer the Preacher","authors":"D. Lose","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.19","url":null,"abstract":"In addition to being a noted systematic theologian, ethicist, and leader of the Confessing Church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also a preacher. In fact, at the centre of all his theological work stands his unfaltering conviction that the preached Word is the primary expression of the Gospel and the place where contemporary believers encounter their living Lord. Bonhoeffer’s homiletic revolves around the preacher’s role of listening attentively to the witness of Scripture in order to accompany the living Word into the congregation so it may meet people where they are, sustain them in their present circumstances, and form them into the living Body of Christ in order to respond to the current needs of the world.","PeriodicalId":404616,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131462595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-31DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.2
Matthew Puffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology of creation is rooted in the confession that Jesus Christ is the mediator. Apart from Christ’s mediation human beings cannot perceive God’s creation, because our postlapsarian world manifests only a fallen creation in which good and evil are confused and intermixed. Whereas Bonhoeffer in his student years affirmed a limited role for the orders of creation, his subsequent writings on the theology of creation can be read as a response to and reaction against the orders of creation. Although human beings have no unmediated access to knowledge of God’s creation, and know the world as fallen creation only through Christ’s redemption, in Christ they are empowered by the Spirit, incorporated into Christ’s body the church, and made a new creation. Only in light of the hoped-for eschatological fulfilment of the new creation may Christian theology speak of the beginning of God’s ways as Creator.
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Pub Date : 2019-10-31DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198753179.013.26
Stephen J. Plant
This chapter begins by describing some of the influences that shaped Bonhoeffer’s political views, narrowly construed, and the central role of Martin Luther’s thought in guiding the direction of those parts of his theology that connect with political life. The chapter continues by exploring how Bonhoeffer attempted to think with and through these sources about the duties and responsibilities of governments and citizens, of the Church, and of the individual Christian in response to the Church struggle and the policies of the Third Reich. What evolved was a reworking of the orders of creation and preservation, a subtle ecology of temporal and spiritual authority under God, and an understanding of reality understood through the incarnation of Christ. This theology funded a steadfast conviction that the Church can and must speak God’s Word to the world, even to the point of standing in the place of the victims of political oppression.
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